


in owing you my life

by ninemoons42



Category: Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Book/Movie Fusion, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Gothic, Pastiche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-13
Updated: 2013-11-13
Packaged: 2018-01-01 09:58:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,047
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1043479
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles Xavier has recently come to a place called Thornfield in the wild countryside of Ireland.</p><p>He's been brought there to teach the young lady of the house, but tonight, he has a different and far more urgent task to carry out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	in owing you my life

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cesare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cesare/gifts), [Pangea](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pangea/gifts).



> Cleaned up and slightly edited from the original version on my Tumblr, which can be found [here](http://ninemoons42.tumblr.com/post/66874586185/quick-ficlet-for-ces-and-pan).

_...and the salary is not much, but you know that I did not take this job for the money. Money I can do without,_ Charles wrote. _The freedom to come and go as one pleases, and the freedom to speak and to read and to teach and to earn one's own way, that cannot be bought, and I am content, here._

He smiled, and closed his eyes. Thought, for a moment, about Raven as she must be right now, taking ship for Europe, safe in her beloved's arms. She would be all right, and so would he, though in stark contrast to her he was now secreted away in a place called Thornfield, away on the wild Irish fens.

Here the skies were constantly grey and lowering, and here the winds cut mercilessly even through the heavy stone walls, and here he was obliged to go about in several layers of shirt and waistcoat and jacket. 

But here, too, he was leagues away from most people. 

Here he was safe.

Well, perhaps he ought to revise that, because he wasn't precisely alone at Thornfield, isolated though it might be. The floors were carpeted, but not enough to silence the dancing footfalls of the young lady of the house, a sprightly and spirited child who had been baptized Catherine but insisted at all times that Charles refer to her as Kitty. The kitchen was kept warm by the combined efforts of the women who laughed and worked there, from imperious Emma to practical Moira to scholarly Jean.

And over them all loomed the distantly sheltering presence of the master of the house: a man named Erik Lehnsherr, who was neither father to Kitty nor husband or brother or son to any of the women - just a man from the continent who had come to take possession of his mother's house, passed on to him at her death, and who gave them all the freedom to do with that house as they wished.

Charles blotted the letter, folded it and placed it in his bureau, and absently thought about Lehnsherr's comings and goings. Gruff and unsociable and cold was his exterior, but Charles couldn't miss the way his eyes lit up when Kitty curtsied to him before taking his hand at the breakfast table, couldn't help but notice that when he left the house he always took care to place its protection in the hands of the women.

Still, he seemed alone, Charles thought, because he knew what alone looked like and he had seen something of it in the way Lehnsherr took long walks by himself after dark, always making sure that he had a lantern but always walking such a long and exhausting way. Charles had once stayed up in his quarters just to watch for the lantern's return - and he'd been badly startled to realized that hours had gone by.

Only grief could account for the terrible lines of sorrow and anguish in his face, and that drove Charles to wonder:

What could drive the master of Thornfield to such shattering grief, borne relentlessly alone?

Somewhere in the great house, a clock began to toll midnight. 

He drew close to his candle to extinguish it - but it was strange that the harsh burr of smoke remained in the air long after the wick had cooled and turned completely black. It was strange that there seemed to be _more_ smoke, acrid and crackling - and he could see it seeping in through the crack at the bottom of his door.

Charles threw on a housecoat and carefully stepped out - and he suppressed the urge to cry out, for the corridor was naught more than bitter haze, the source of which seemed to be - the master's rooms.

He didn't stop, he didn't think, he didn't hesitate: back into his room he dashed for the washbasin and the ewer, both still blessedly half-full, and then out again, coughing as he listened for the crackling that could only mean open flame.

Here was the master's door and he threw it open. No time for shock. The flames were eating slowly but steadily at bedframe and carpet and Lehnsherr was insensible in the midst of it all. Charles took a deep suffocating breath and threw the water over him, did the same with Lehnsherr's pitcher and basin. 

"Wake, sir," Charles shouted, coughing violently between the words. "For pity's sake, _wake_!"

Lehnsherr stirred, looked at his own dripping state and at the fire in the room, and he seemed to understand. A hard grip on Charles's elbow, and he was thrust out into the corridor, and Lehnsherr threw his blankets, the contents of his wardrobe, to the floor, in an attempt to smother the growing blaze.

"Let me call for help!" Charles cried.

"No need!" And it seemed to be as the master willed it, for the flames hissed and began to die for lack of oxygen.

And Charles himself could not take a clean breath.

Movement, again, and he was being guided away from the smoke. Once again that uncompromising grip, but paired this time with a soothing rumble of a voice: "Come, now, I will not have my savior succumb to the fire he woke me from."

"Sir," Charles said as soon as he could speak. They were standing two floors down, next to an open window, and the breeze was cold and welcome and scouring, though it did make him wrap his arms around himself. "Please tell me you are unharmed."

"Thanks to your timely intervention I will live to see another day," was the response. "I am grateful to you, Charles."

Had Lehnsherr ever stood so close? But there he was, and Charles could count the fine long eyelashes, the faint scars on cheekbone and temple, the silver hairs winding through the dark. "And I will do all I can to show my appreciation. You saved me from a most excruciating death, by yourself, heedlessly and courageously. Ask me for anything, for it will please me to owe you my life."

Charles's teeth were chattering from the shock of the flames and of the cold, but he tried to master himself, and he whispered, "I only wish to see you well and hale and happy, Erik, and not lonely."


End file.
